1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a method for presenting information such as content and files on a display screen, and an apparatus therefor.
2. Description of the Related Art
As a method for presenting various kinds of information which are stored in a local medium or on an external network such as the Internet, including but not limited to, music content, video content, factual information that indicates facts and events such as news, or file data such as image files or document files which are created by user, there are known techniques that display an icon for each piece of information or display each information itself arranged in the order of dates or names.
As a specific example, for the historic event “lunar landing of Apollo 11 in July, 1969”, information itself is displayed in a chronological table.
Japanese Unexamined Patent Application Publication No. 11-249640 discloses that the personal history of user from his birth to present day is displayed in the format of a chronological table data that consists of a pair of date-and-time data and event data, where the personal history is sectioned into blocks of several years, such as the period from an age of zero to an age of four, the period from an age of five to an age of nine, the period from an age of ten to an age of fourteen, and so forth.
Japanese Unexamined Patent Application Publication No. 11-66049 discloses that, upon reception of a request for displaying of a chronological table from a user terminal that is connected to a server via a network, the server reads personal history information of the source of the request out of personal event database and reads history information out of history event database so as to create data for displaying the chronological table in which these information are arranged in correspondence with each other, and then transmits the generated data to the user terminal, which is the request source.
When one file or a plurality of files contained in a folder is/are presented on a personal computer (PC), an icon that indicates the file or icons each of which indicates the corresponding file is/are displayed in a presentation window for the folder in one line or column or in a plurality of lines or columns arranged in the order of file names thereof or the dates of file creation/update thereof.
In such a presentation, when a new file is created on a PC or an existing file is acquired anew from a local storage device or via a network to add the file to the folder, or when an existing file that belongs to another folder is moved or copied to the first-mentioned folder through drag and drop of the icon on the PC, the icon that indicates the newly-created, acquired, moved or copied file is displayed at a position that is determined by the file name or the file creation/update date thereof in the presentation window of the folder so as to move the display position of all icons indicating other files that are posterior to the first-mentioned file, that is, the newly-created, acquired, moved or copied one, behind the icon of the first-mentioned file.
Japanese Unexamined Patent Application Publication No. 2002-44555 discloses that, as a method for controlling information display, the streaming video of video content now under replay is displayed in the video display area of a displayed screen image, the complete information of video content that is currently selected with a selection cursor is displayed in the detail information area thereof, and the icon image of the video content now under selection is displayed in the selected video display area thereof, where a mark indication of “now under replay” is affixed to the icon of video content which is currently being replayed, a mark indication of “viewed” is affixed to the icon of video content which has already been viewed by user, and the icon of video content whose media data has been deleted is displayed in a faint color or in gray.